Blogs Last About a Year

This is my second blog.

My first blog, Team Teal in the Twin Towns, was devoted to discussion of the sport of ice hockey, specifically the National Hockey League, and even more specifically my favorite team, the San Jose Sharks.

I noticed recently that I hadn't posted on it since January 2nd, and that my posting prior to that had been sparse for some time.

I hesitate to say that I "lost interest". That particular phrase is common enough to have a particular connotation associated with it, and that connotation is more or less negative. Writing that January 2nd post was no less fun an endeavor than writing any previous post. Maybe it's better to say that Team Teal in the Twin Towns "ran its course"...? Or, maybe even better, we can say that it lived a long and rich life and has now shuffled off to the great internet in the sky. (SkyNet? Hmmm, maybe not...)

I was talking about this with a friend of mine in Milwaukee last weekend and we both agreed that your average blog--unless it is super big-time and/or designed to be profitable--lasts about a year. Furthermore, we agreed that this seems just fine. A year seems like a very proper amount of time to write about a particular topic in any kind of detail. Any more than that--unless you are either getting paid or are astonishingly devoted to the topic at hand--and you can't help but wonder if maybe taking a different angle on this whole blogging thing might be more enjoyable than pushing on with the site that's getting a bit long in the tooth.

So, out with the old, in with the new. Close Personal Friends With the Duke! is going to be a general-topics blog (or at least I think it is). You'll probably find a decent amount of sports talk here, still. You're unlikely to find any discussion of the Can-you-believe-those-clowns-in-Congress-type unless I'm making a Simpsons reference ("Don't. Praise. The machine."), because although I vote and like to believe I'm reasonably well-informed I've grown to despise conversation about politics. Other topics may include music, TV, movies, the abstraction of naval and air combat in Totaler Krieg!, and Jane Austen.

To begin with, though, I'm going to go back to that old favorite subject of mine...San Jose Sharks hockey. This wonderful piece was written by Laura McCoy, a high-school senior writing a regular column for the Monterey County Herald. Laura attended her first hockey game recently. Clearly, she loved it, and she captures the excitement and spirit of the sport in her article. Well worth reading.

'Till next time, then, when I'll discuss...geez, who knows what.